Chris Farmer

Founder & CEO, SignalFire · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

investorfounderexecutive@chriswfarmer ↗signalfire.com/human/chris-farmer ↗

Chris Farmer founded SignalFire in 2013, establishing an early-stage, data-driven venture capital firm powered by its proprietary Beacon AI platform. Prior to SignalFire, he led General Catalyst's seed investment program and served as a Vice President at Bessemer Venture Partners.

17statements → 5claims → 0claims resolved → 4.06/5average certainty → 2.29/5average debate potential → 4.6/5argument clarity · the sources → 7said about them ↓

5 not checkable as stated how the 5 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

1 prediction · 4 assertions · 6 opinions · 1 insight · 5 disclosures · every statement was checked. The prediction and assertions are the 5 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 0 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Chris argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.6 / 5 directness 5 · coherence 5 · precision 4.8 · compression 4.1

answered every one of 8 assessed questions directly

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

231 words/min while actually speaking · 12.8 um and uh per 1k words

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,670 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 4/10

pushed back at the host ▾ 3/10

setup questions received 65%

host pushback: the hardest questions Harry asked, tap to play ▶ 8:29“Having such a data-centric approach, is there the potential to lose the human element of assessing kind of the eye of the tiger and the founder?” ▶ 16:33“If you were to assess them the future of venture with data in In terms of correlation, maybe at the opposite end of the spectrum, but you're both utilizing data in one way to show …”

when Chris pushed back ▶ 9:22“I think it's a misperception that, that what we're doing is actually trying to use data to, to score a company in that sense.” ▶ 16:06“Yeah, well, I, you know, I have a lot of respect for the sort of pioneering approach that correlation has done, but honestly, we're like opposite ends of the spectrum, right?”

What they said17 What others said7 Episodes1

Everything Chris Farmer said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Opinion

Farmer: Major VC funds have devolved into momentum investors

“The major funds, I think, to drift away from their roots of sort of being that sort of foundational investor, and they've become much more momentum investors versus sort of the initial partner that a founder has from inception.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 11:32 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Insight

Farmer: Founders care about operational support, not VC sourcing algorithms

“No entrepreneur gives a shit what, you know, algorithm we use to find them. They care about how we help them build the business as they should”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 17:35 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Farmer: Traditional VCs will fade away without investing in founder support

“I think the old guard VCs are on notice and that they have to make meaningful investments in better support of entrepreneurs or they'll fade away.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 18:28 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Opinion

Farmer: Traditional VC model is outdated and must be rebuilt from scratch

“After a few years, I felt that VC was outdated. So I left Bessemer to study one question. If you were to strip a venture curve down to the bare metal to where to recreate a firm from scratch, how would you build a next generation VC?”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 4:44 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Opinion

Farmer: Most venture capital firms operate exactly as they did in 1970

“So for the most part, the way most VCs do business has barely changed since 1970.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 6:00 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Opinion

Farmer: Most venture capital data efforts are superficial window dressing

“Some firms have begun to dabble with data, but almost none have serious efforts in the area, so it's mostly window dressing at best.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 7:06 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Farmer: SignalFire almost always beats traditional seed funds head-to-head

“And as a result of that, we have an unbelievably high win rate against the top venture firms in the industry and almost always win head to head against the seed funds because typically we're competing with, you know, two guys and a dog and we're bringing an ar…”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 13:03 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Disclosure

Farmer: SignalFire refuses to take board seats at the seed stage

“At the seed stage, we don't take board seats.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 13:55 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Opinion

Farmer: Traditional quarterly board meeting cycles move far too slowly

“Frankly, I think that the cycle of board interactions is far too slow.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 13:57 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Opinion

Farmer: Too many VCs lack conviction and rely on peer validation

“There's probably too many people who, and VCs in the industry who sit on the fence and don't have the conviction themselves to make their own decisions without Without pure validation. And so there's some awesome entrepreneurial, you know, investors that reall…”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 20:39 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Disclosure

Farmer: SignalFire does not use data to evaluate founder quality

“I'd still believe in, you know, heavily in human loop systems, and so we're not trying to assess the quality of the founder, you know, with using data.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 8:37 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Disclosure

Farmer: SignalFire operates more like Uber than a database like Mattermark

“We're using technology to enable discovery, competitive intelligence, contextualization, collaboration, and ultimately support of our portfolio companies. So, so we look more like Uber than we look like Mattermark in that sense.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 9:31 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Farmer hired six researchers to interview 500 founders and deconstruct VC

“I hired six researchers for a year in 2009 to study precisely that question. And we interviewed over 500 founders and 170 funds from seed to buyout hedge and every major venture fund in between.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 4:57 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Disclosure

SignalFire employs 17 staff, primarily engineers and data scientists

“Today we have 17 full-time people on the team, and we have more engineers and data scientists than any other function.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 7:55 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Farmer: Survey of 500 founders reveals recruiting is the top pain point

“So, you know, in the research we did, interviewing over 500 founders, recruiting was the number one pain point of almost all the founders”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 12:30 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Disclosure

Farmer: SignalFire leads every investment deal it participates in

“We lead every deal.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 16:14 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Farmer: Institutional seed investing emerged in 2008 driven by AWS

“And then around oh eight seed investing started to institutionalize driven by capital efficiencies from open source and cloud computing platforms like AWS and the distribution channels like the app stores and social networks.”

Chris Farmer Nov 30, 2016 ▶ 10:10 20VC: Why There Is A Revolution In VC, Why Boards Are Inherently Inefficient & Why Data Will Be Central To VC In The Future with Chris Farmer, General Partner @ SignalFire

The other half of the tape: Chris Farmer's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 7 times in 4 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Harry Stebbings 6 David Teten 1